On Wed, 2014-04-02 at 14:06 -0700, Sharon Levy wrote:
Why does the PHP project continue to be without any kind of corporate
sponsorship in contrast to the opensource project Ubuntu which is backed by
Canonical? If the PHP project were to have a company supporting it,
wouldn't it be better protected? And, with a company backing it wouldn't the
issue of acquiring a trademark then be feasible?
Now PHP has multiple companies supporting it. Aside from previously
mentioned Zend we have or had active contributors from industry giants
as IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, Google or Facebook (certainly incomplete
list) and tons of smaller companies and individuals who actually use
PHP. All on the same level. Such even if some of the decide to not
support PHP anymore there are enough shoulders to keep it running.
Having a for-benefit corporation might give paid developers who are
focused and might add predictability but a) we partly have that, b) that
drives away contributors ("why should I give them my code for free if
they make benefits out of it?")
What could work is a non profit foundation (US 501(c) or German e.V.
like KDE or whatever) but then the question is: What, aside from
bureaucracy, is the *actual* benefit? Over the last ten ears I have been
involved that discussion came up multiple times but I've never seen a
good answer outweighing the trouble.
johannes
If the PHP project were to join a non-profit designed to promote opensource projects, offering services like trademark registration and enforcement, would such an action clash with keeping PHP free and open? Apparently, more than 30 other opensource projects have taken this route, although I have yet to learn how well each are thriving.